Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I ask everyone's opinion when they don't speak up. And then when they have an opinion, I'll ask others to talk about it.
When you're on a scale like we are in 170 countries and hundreds of thousands of people, you have a single point of view.
One day we're going to look back, and whatever this era will get called, it's going to put a premium on math and science.
If you ask me, 'So what is your business model?' Our business model's always about shifting to higher value opportunities.
What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.
No matter what it is, you put too much, your heart and soul in it, you have to be passionate about it. You make too many sacrifices.
With this emergence of big data and social mobility, you will, in fact, see the death of 'average,' Instead, you will see the era of you.
You need to have a great support around you, people that empathise, understand and yet support, because these CEO jobs are all-consuming.
I believe that the idea of strategic beliefs may be more important than strategic planning when thinking about how you keep the long view.
Just because you started your careers in a certain role, let's say hardware engineering, does not mean you'll end your careers in hardware.
It's easy to have an act one and two. Go ahead and have an act three, four, and five. The saying is the easy part. The doing is the hard part.
I think actions speak louder than words is one thing I think I always took from my mom. And to this day, I think about that in everything I do.
We should prepare our future workforce differently. It isn't just advanced STEM degrees. There are many jobs you can do without advanced degrees.
You make the right decision for the long run. You manage for the long run, and you continue to move to higher value. That's what I think my job is.
I think 'Actions speak louder than words' is one thing, I think, I always took from my mom. And to this day, I think about that in everything I do.
So what it means is when you don't believe in the inevitable, it means you don't expect that that's how things have to turn out. You can change them.
I've been head of strategy at IBM and together with my colleagues built our five-year plan. My priorities are going to be to continue to execute on that.
Whatever business you're in - it doesn't matter - it's going to commoditize over time. It's going to devalue. You've got to keep moving it to a higher value.
The only way you survive is you continuously transform into something else. It's this idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company.
You define yourself by either what your clients want or what you believe they'll need for the future. So: Define yourself by your client, not your competitor.
If I have learned nothing else in all my years here, my biggest lesson is you have to constantly reinvent this company. That's how you get to be 103 years old.
One thing I always think about in making a market, and it again is something I have learned from Sam [Palmisano] as well, he always says, "Be first and be lonely."
I make time to exercise. It's not being indulgent. I think it's got a lot to do with your ability to manage properly and stay focused. There's no doubt about that.
When you manage your company for long-term shareholders, and you manage the company for clients, two of the biggest stakeholders, you will make the right decisions.
I think, particularly in our tech industry, this is an industry that has violent innovation and then commoditization, and it's a cycle of innovation/commoditization.
I've made lots of mistakes. Probably the worst one - I would say they tie. It's either when I didn't move fast enough on something, or I didn't take a big enough risk.
Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we'll augment our intelligence.
As I say to our own team: 'Never protect your past, never define yourself by a single product, and always continue to steward for the long-term. Keep moving towards the future.'
Big Data will spell the death of customer segmentation and force the marketer to understand each customer as an individual within eighteen months, or risk being left in the dust.
I am big on - even with our whole team - it's always about, well, what were the lessons learned? Something didn't work out? What are the lessons learned? What are the lessons learned?
What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues.
If we would change the basis and align what is taught in school with what is needed with business... that's where I came up with this idea of 'new collar.' Not blue collar or white collar.
For CEOs today, it's all about acheieving growth and efficiency through innovation. It's not about product innovation so much anymore as about innovating business models. process, culture and management.
I've got a distribution system that goes to 170 countries. If I acquire properly, you know, you may be successful in one or two countries, or one place; I can scale, and that's part of the value that IBM brings.
Some people make their choice on size. I happen to not be a believer in that. I've often said, especially in an industry that's clamoring for growth, if I wanted size, I wouldn't have divested $8 billion of businesses.
Everyone talks about how much data's in the world. Except, actually, 80% of it is pretty blind to computers. I mean, it can store it. But if it's a movie, a poem, a song, it doesn't know what it's actually saying or doing.
IBM's long-standing mantra is 'Think.' What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues.
When my father left us, my mother went back to school immediately. She went to school in the day while we were at school, and she worked at night. She worked very hard to never let someone define her as a victim or a failure.
This idea of 'New Collar' says for the jobs of the future here, there are many in technology that can be done without a four-year college degree and, therefore, 'New Collar' not 'Blue Collar,' 'White Collar.' It's 'New Collar.'
I strongly believe that through dedication and perseverance, one can overcome adversity to achieve success. It is a privilege to accept membership in the Horatio Alger Association, an organization which promotes this principle.
I always say, you know, if I sit here and close my eyes and say, 'When did I learn the most in my life, in my career?' It'll always be when I close them and everything I think of is when I took a risk. It's when I think I learned the most.
One of the most important things for any leader is to never let anyone else define who you are. And you define who you are. I never think of myself as being a woman CEO of this company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution.
My mom had not worked a day in her life, and then she woke up when I was 15 and found herself with four children, no job, no money. But she set out and made it all OK for us, and from that, I saw that there's no problem that can't be solved.
The amazing thing about IBM is that it's a company where I have had 10 different careers - local jobs, global jobs, technology jobs, industry jobs, financial services, insurance, start-ups, big scale. The network of talent around you is phenomenal.
Artificial intelligence is one of 50 things that Watson does. There is also machine learning, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and different analytical engines - they're like little Lego bricks. You can put intelligence in any product or any process you have.
And the reason I came to IBM was I think - I always say at a really early age, I learned you've got to be passionate about what you do. No matter what it is, you put too much, your heart and soul in it, you have to be passionate about it. You make too many sacrifices.
I'm the kid that tried to take Latin in school because I felt if I could understand the root of everything, then I could understand why it worked. That was what took me into engineering. And the reason I stayed is, engineering teaches you to solve problems. It teaches you to think.
I'm the ninth CEO of IBM. Every one of my predecessors has steered through a technological shift, and every one left the company in a better position than the person before them and prepared this company with a very strong balance sheet to allow it to continue to invest for the next shift.
Watson augments human decision-making because it isn't governed by human boundaries. It draws together all this information and forms hypotheses, millions of them, and then tests them with all the data it can find. It learns over time what data is reliable, and that's part of its learning process.
Think about when a digital business marries up with what I'll call 'digital intelligence.' It is the dawn of a new era about being a 'cognitive' business. When every product, every service, how you run your company can actually have a piece that learns and thinks as part of it, you will be a cognitive business.